Rastafari Movement

Formation: 1930s

Founders: Leonard Howell, Archibald Dunkley, and Joseph Hibbert

Rastafari (or Ras Tafari) is a religion rooted in Jewish and Christian sources that developed in Jamaica in the 1930s. Believers call themselves Rastas, Rastafarians, or Ras, but they object to the religion itself being called Rastafarianism, out of a generalized suspicion of the corrupting influence of any kind of "ism." Rastafari developed after the coronation of Haile Selassie I as emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. The name Rastafari is a compound of the Amharic word ras, meaning "chief" or "head," and Tafari, which was the given name of Haile Selassie before he became emperor.

Rastas believe that Haile Selassie was the second coming of Jesus, basing this belief on their particular understanding of various biblical prophecies, ancient Ethiopian traditions, and modern claims of prophecy found in the works of twentieth century political theorist Marcus Garvey.

In the popular imagination, Rastafari life is characterized by the cultivation of dreadlocks and the ritualized consumption of cannabis. These elements are indeed important, but they have developed quite recently in the short history of the religion, in response to various internal and external pressures.

A Jamaican census in 2011 counted 29,000 individuals who identified themselves as Rastafari, about 5 percent of the total population of the island. Some experts estimate that there are approximately one million Rastas around the world, most of them Jamaican emigrants.

History

At the time of Haile Selassie's coronation as emperor in 1930, he was the only non-European ruler of an independent state in an Africa still dominated by imperialism. His ascent to the throne was seen as an important event throughout the world, especially, but not only, to people of African origin (he was the first black person to appear on the cover of Time magazine, on November 3, 1930). The Ethiopian nobility from whom Haile Selassie sprang claimed a history going back to biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and he self-consciously claimed his mantle as the "Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah" and the 225th in an unbroken line of monarchs since Solomon. He considered himself a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the name Haile Selassie means "power of the Trinity."

These biblical echoes by themselves, according to Barry Chevannes, an expert on African and Caribbean religions, would have been insufficient to lead people to accept Haile Selassie as the returned messiah without other factors. The most important of these factors, he writes, "was the impact of the work and ideas of Marcus Garvey in the form of a heightened Black, pan-African consciousness" (Chavannes, 10). Garvey called for the economic and political liberation of Africa from European and American domination, with the active participation of Africans who lived in the west. Some of Garvey’s followers, without his support, actually considered him to be a prophet, especially his advice to "look to Africa for the crowning of a king to know that your redemption is near." Three Jamaican men, Leonard Howell, Archibald Dunkley, and Joseph Hibbert, are considered to be the first to have preached the divinity of Haile Selassie and to have fostered the new religion through its early years. Marcus Garvey himself never identified with Rastafari, however, even becoming harshly critical of Haile Selassie in later years.

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, the Rastafari religion grew primarily among the poorest members of Jamaican society as they fled the countryside to settle in urban Kingston. Many traits of the religion as it developed are the result of its anti-establishment, oppositional character—against imperialism and white domination, against the existing Jamaican elite, for the poor against the more wealthy.

Beliefs and Practices

Rastas believe that God, whom they call "Jah," exists as a trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jah, a name stemming from biblical Hebrew, is particularly identified with the Holy Spirit that is incarnate with every human being. A typical Rastafari pattern of speech is to say "I and I" in place of "we," in order to emphasize the radical equality of all people because of this in-dwelling Holy Spirit. Rastas believe that Haile Selassie will lead them to create a new, perfect world of Zion, with its capital, the new Jerusalem, being in Ethiopia. They believe that this process of restoration involves the separation of the righteous from the world of corruption and materialism, which they call Babylon. Many Rastas believe in physical immortality rather than resurrection. This is called "life everliving."

Though Rastas have established special meeting places that might be considered churches, it is fundamentally the meeting of believers together that creates holiness, rather than the place of the meeting. There are two essential types of Rastafari ritual, the "reasoning" and the "nyabinghi" (sometimes called "grounation"). The reasoning is an informal gathering of a small circle of believers, who engage in ritual consumption of cannabis and spiritually focused conversation. The nyabinghi is a dance held on sacred occasions, among which are milestone dates in the lives of Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey. Rastas also tend strongly to maintain various private rituals, many of which involve diet and the avoidance of non-natural medicines.

The wearing of dreadlocks became characteristic of Rastafari life only in the late 1940s, when a second generation of believers who called themselves the Youth Black Faith sought to reform the religion away from what they saw as its early failures. According the Barry Chavannes, their choice of dreadlocks constituted "a defiant rejection of society and an equally defiant assumption of society’s rejection of them as outcasts" (Chavannes, 77). A similar dynamic was at work in the ritualization of cannabis, which occurred also in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Cannabis use was widespread among the urban poor of Jamaica at that time. As police and government authorities attempted to suppress its use, some groups of Rastafari also began to restrict and eliminate it. But the Youth Black Faith saw a divine sanction in the use of cannabis, and felt police suppression of drug use was tantamount to religious suppression. Again in the words of Barry Chavannes, "by giving [cannabis] a ritual sanction they were in effect expressing their contempt for the state and society" (Chavannes, 86). Some Rastas believe that the word cannabis is derived from the Hebrew "qaneh bosem," one of the sacred anointing incenses mentioned in Exodus 30.

In addition to the Young Black Faith, several other subgroups of Rastafari emerged over the decades. The Ethiopian National Congress, also known as Bobo Ashanti, was formed in 1958 bu Prince Emanuel Charles Edwards. The Twelve Tribes of Israel was developed in 1968 by Vernon Carrington, known as the Prophet Gad. Rastafari groups were frequently persecuted in Jamaica even after the nation's official independence in 1962. However, things improved in the 1970s, especially as the movement gained popularity among younger Jamaicans. In 1972 Michael Manley won the Jamaican presidency and embraced elements of Rastafari in his campaigns.

The death of Haile Selassie in 1975 created something of a spiritual crisis among Rastas, leaving many to believe that he had not died but gone into hiding in a monastery, from which he will return to liberate his followers. Still, the movement grew in popularity over the next decade. This was in large part due to the success of Jamaican reggae musician Bob Marley, a Rasta convert who achieved worldwide stardom. His music often explicitly referenced Rastafari beliefs and drew global attention to the religion. Following Marley's death in 1981 global attention to Rastafari began to gradually decline, and various further subdivisions emerged.

From the mid-1990s into the first decades of the twenty-first century Rastafari saw occasional, general localized revivals, often connected to reggae musicians. The religion also faced increasing criticism for its typcially male-dominated culture. It remained closely associated with Jamaica, a connection often promoted by various organizations in that country to advance tourism. The Jamaican government also made moves to reconcile its former persecution of Rastas, including legalizing marijuana in 2015 and formally apologizing for a violent 1963 confrontation in 2017.

Bibliography

Chevannes, Barry. Rastafari and Other African-Caribbean Worldviews. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1998. Print.

Emery, Marc. "Rastafari: The Secret History of the Marijuana Religion." Cannabis Culture. Cannabis Culture, 29 Aug. 2009. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. <http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2009/08/29/rastafari-secret-history-marijuana-religion>.

Mack, Douglas R. A., Douglas R. Ewart, and Sekou Sankara Tafari. From Babylon to Rastafari: Origin and History of the Rastafarian Movement. Chicago: Research Associates, 1999. Print.

Murrell, Nathaniel Samuel, William David Spencer, and Adrian Anthony McFarlane. Chanting down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1998. Print.

Owens, Joseph, and Rex M. Nettleford. Dread: The Rastafarians of Jamaica. Kingston: Sangster, 1995. Print.

"Rastafarianism." History, 21 Aug. 2018, www.history.com/topics/religion/history-of-rastafarianism. Accessed 28 Jan. 2019.